The staffing squeeze: How turnover piles work on physicians

Rihan Javid, D.O., J.D. talks about what turnover actually feels like inside a practice — before anyone labels it a “staffing crisis.”

When medical assistants, billing staff or prior auth coordinators leave, the work does not disappear. It rolls uphill. Medication refills that used to be handled by support staff start landing directly in the physician’s inbox. Front-desk gaps mean doctors step in to room or check in patients. Prior authorizations that once lived with staff wind up on the physician’s desk. In some practices, he says, even billing tasks are falling back on doctors.

The result is subtle at first: longer evenings, more inbox work, more time spent on non-clinical tasks. Over time, that extra load erodes capacity for patient care and accelerates burnout — even if leaders haven’t yet tied it back to turnover.